


Stories You Share

by violettebaji



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Convenience Store, Demons, Gen, Horror, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 12:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17867555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violettebaji/pseuds/violettebaji
Summary: Life is rarely linear. We constantly relive moments through snapshots, in pictures and videos and spoken word, major life events and insignificant happenings in kind may be related to each other through stories. Some stories you share, and others might just be better left unsaid.





	Stories You Share

There are stories you share and stories you keep to yourself. This may very well be one of the latter, the kind of unbelievable that stems from a dark place of knowing. You’re aware of it, but you choose not to be. How this will turn out for me, I can’t say. But this is a story I choose to share.

December of 2018 I had already had my fair share of encounters with the supernatural. It’s one of those things that just happens in a small town like mine. Things hide in the corn and feed on cats. A lady that doesn’t live here anymore cries on a street corner late at night. There are sounds you tell your children don’t exist and not to question them. But this happened a little farther away from me. It made me wonder what staying in a place like this can do to your soul.

I was having a bad night. I don’t remember exactly why, but I remember that my dogs had gotten into a fight and one of them had been pretty badly bitten. He had bleeding puncture wounds, wouldn’t go near the other, couldn’t stop shaking, the whole shebang. As an attempt to cheer me up, my two close friends Sal and Stretch invited me out to the mall in Pensacola about an hour from where I live. It was just meant to be a bit of fun and then I’d be back home. The mall isn’t open that incredibly late, I think around 9pm. We hung out for quite a while all things considered, pretty much until closing time. Visited a couple of fair trade and holistic outlets because I like incense and crystals, the Hot Topic because we're all just a little emo still, and a boba stand that also sold macarons. But of course the place had to close eventually, and by then we were pretty much out of things to do. 

I still wasn’t jazzed about going back home, even though it’d be another while before we even got back into my town. Stretch, who drove us, who drove pretty much every outing, was kind and said we could kill a little more time just until my parents would’ve likely been asleep and dealt with the dogs. I’ve always been kind of afraid of dogs, but that’s not important.

So we drove. Our trip had been on kind of an odd day for knowing we wouldn’t be home until at least 10pm, but wednesday evenings were often the only time we all had enough time off work or school. So as we gallivanted around aimlessly in northeast Florida and the hours continued to tick by, my eyes began to droop. It was then I was forced to come to the realization that I would have work at 7am the following morning. As it was already closing in on half past 1, I knew I would be getting little or no sleep. And if I was going to have to choose between a three hour nap before getting up at 6 or just toughing it out, I’d be better off not even bothering with sleep.

This is around the time that I started making decisions that I wouldn’t have dared to in my own town. First of all I wouldn’t have asked for coffee at ass o’clock in the morning when I had work the next day. My mother would inevitably find out and her lectures are some of the worst, having been a school teacher for young kids. She could make you feel smaller than anyone. Second, I definitely would not let myself stop into a convenience store after 10pm, period. And third, I would not have stayed as long as I did once I saw what I saw.

It wasn’t totally my fault, to be fair. One of the two, Sal, had also had to stop to use the restroom, seeing as he’d be dropped off even after me and we were still just less than an hour from my house. He’s in a different town from me, half an hour down the highway.

He doesn’t have the same ghosts, but he has the same stories.

When we pulled up, the lot was empty. Not even employee cars lingered from where I could see, and there didn’t look to be a back lot. Just trees and fence. I could’ve been wrong. But that’s the kind of thing you tell yourself to make the shivers in your stomach go away when you pass by that one place where that thing happened so long ago. All the lights were on, which I figured was a good enough sign.

Sal and I got out at the same time, and he headed to the outhouse like building marked “RESTROOMS” out beside the convenience store itself. There was no name in the neon lights framing the roof, there were no hours posted on the door, just half the store lit up in bright fluorescents and two knocked out on the other side. The door was unlocked. I went in.

From the front double doors the register counter was in plain sight, to the right with one side blocked off and one open. A big wall of windows sat just behind it, showing a reflection of the packs of cigarettes under the till and what looked to be some extra candy bars. Aisles were to the left, six in total, drinks were in a reach-in cooler lining a wall and a half behind them, and a small coffee station sat where they ended. Another door, this one solid, sat just beside it in a divet in the wall. It was small, the shelves were short, and it was easy to see everything. No one was inside. I don’t even remember if the door chimed when I opened it.

If I were in my town I’d have been smarter, that’s what I tell myself. I’d have turned around, asked to go somewhere else, or just gone home and slept. I would not have done what I did, which was march the twenty or so feet to the back for a 68¢ cup of coffee. I would not have been so stupid, I tell myself. I want to believe I wouldn’t have been, anyway.

So I got my coffee, fixed it up how I like, and walked to the counter. Still no one. I waited what felt uncomfortably long before I began to look around, not moving from my spot, simply turning my head this way and that. When I looked back, he was standing there.

Have you ever gotten that feeling, where something is so out of place that it’s intrinsically wrong? Something shocks you so badly you can’t even flinch, you just freeze? The cold shudder that ran through me at that moment can be likened to that feeling, but so bone-deep and terrifying that even now I can feel cramps in my arms from the way I stiffened. There had been absolutely no way for him to get past me, and nowhere for him to hide behind the counter where I couldn’t have seen him in the reflection. It was unsettling in the worst kind of way.

As we held stare, and my mind began to catch up, I was awash with the urge to leave immediately. I've never walked away from a counter without paying, but for this I could’ve made an exception. I _should’ve_ made an exception.

He was incredibly tall, much taller than my measly five feet one inch, and very gangly. His limbs looked awkwardly thin, almost unwieldy, with prominent veins and bony elbows. His eyes were deeply sunken, almost bruised looking from how bad the bags underneath them were. They were dead, hollow, like he hadn’t slept in months. They almost seemed to not reflect at all. His hair was short and roughly cut, slightly uneven, and both it and his eyes were incredibly dark colored while the rest of him was pale. The contrast was made even more grotesque by the fact that the two lights on either side of the counter were blown out, the one just overhead flickering intermittently.

The thing that unsettled me most about him was the twisted up, overly large grin he wore. It was bordering on unnatural, stretching his face in a way that looked painful. I couldn’t tell what it reflected, amusement or malice, but it made the overall picture of his long face that much more surreal. The harder I try to picture it, the less clearly I can see it. I can’t remember what he wore, but I know he wasn’t wearing a nametag.

“Will that be all?” He had said, breaking me out of my assessment. His mouth moved in strange shapes, like the sounds he was making were not the same as the sounds I was hearing, and no matter what he never lost his grin. Shocked, heart beating erratically, I stuttered out a dumb “what?” and stared at him in disbelief

“Will that be all?” He repeated the same words, pointing a bony finger at my coffee cup. I tripped over a yes, now hoping to get the hell out of there as soon as humanly possible. He rang me up, I paid my 68¢ (exactly), and did not receive a receipt. For a moment longer I stood and stared at him, hand slowly beginning to burn clutched shaking around my paper coffee cup. He once again startled me with a sudden declaration of “have a pleasant morning.”

And so I began to walk away, thinking I had gotten out of the ordeal with two words, a cup of coffee and no receipt. And of course, I was completely wrong. 

“I hope your dog is okay.” That same voice called out to me, no louder than it had been in front of my face but somehow sounding exactly as clear.

I stopped dead.

Shaking even more violently, I turned halfway between the counter and the doors and stared wide-eyed back at him. He was slightly angled toward me, his head fixed in a bizarrely stiff position. The grin was still on his face.

“Excuse me?” I blurted out unthinkingly, another terrible choice to add to the growing list. You don’t just not think when you’re dealing with things like that.

“Your dog. I hope he’s okay.”

I remember stuttering out a “thank you” and then my feet finally finding themselves and hightailing it out of there. I almost spilled my coffee barreling into Stretch’s car, understandably frightening the both of them.

“Where have you been?” He demanded, but I wasn’t listening.

“We gotta go.” I choked out.

“What happened?” They were both staring at me, matching round eyes and a hint of something pale and grim like they already had an idea.

I shook my head. “We gotta _go._ ”

He took pity on me, and though we didn’t peel out of there like I’d have liked to we were out and that was what mattered.

I wound up getting so jittery from the encounter that I didn’t even need the coffee and instead gave it to Sal in the front passenger seat. Almost the whole ride home passed in silence, the heavy kind where everyone wants to say something but no one wants to talk first. Finally, at the head of the road leading down to my house, Sal spoke up.

“So, where’d you go? I came out of the bathroom and Stretch said you were still inside. I looked all over but you weren’t in there.”

For yet another chilling moment, my blood ran cold. As the night progressed I was beginning to think I would never be warm-blooded again. I had been in plain view of the doors, and Sal had never once come in.

We slowed to a stop in my driveway. I didn’t speak for a minute, gathering myself as we pulled into my driveway, one hand on my seat buckle and one on the car door handle, before all at once deflating.

 “I’ll tell you later,” I promised him. And then I didn’t. 

Some stories you share, and some are better haunting you alone. I don’t know exactly which one this is, I don’t know if I should be saying anything, and I don’t know if I’m testing something out there by saying it anyway.

One thing I do know, that I’m more than certain of, is that I never said a damn thing to that man about my dog.


End file.
